<editorial board> edu-factory meeting in amsterdam

[info at edu-factory.org]

Edu-factory meeting in Amsterdam, in the Winter Camp: 3-7
March, 2008

Participants: Claudia Bernardi, Paolo Do, Andrea Ghelfi,
Anja Kanngleser, Camillo Imperore, Brett Neilson, Matteo
Pasquinelli, Gerlad Raunig, Gigi Roggero, Ranabir Samaddar,
Jon Solomon.

•	The meeting marks a new phase in the edu-factory
project. The occasion of a face-to-face encounter embodies
in a concrete way the peculiarity of edu-factory, that is
the perspective of a transnational politics. In other words,
the meeting provided a space in which to share, translate
and build up a common language about the analysis of
transformations to the university and their different forms
of regional and trans-regional declination. It also provided
a chance to discuss criticisms of the modern epistemological
status of the knowledge, the meaning of the contemporary
crisis, and action on the borders of the university.
•	At the same time, the meeting was decisive for
re-thinking the composition of edu-factory as a complex
machine. We clarified the different parts of this machine
(the list, the editorial board, the collective, the emergent
network of struggles) and its forms of governance. This was
necessary to deepen and define the already existing projects
and spaces (the web-journal, the website, the list
discussion), to plan new projects (meetings, the network of
struggles), and to face central aspects, such as the
question of funds. At all times we confronted these issues
not as technical but as political questions. 
•	As regards the web-journal structure, we defined a
proposal of two sections, developing the idea of the
internal and external translation circulated on the
editorial board list: one section on how the university
works, the other on the processes of excess and defection.
The possible names are “Occupation” and “Anomalies”.
A third part of the web-journal will be dedicated to book
reviews.
•	For each issue, we propose to nominate a group of
editors, consisting of people both internal and external to
the editorial board. We discussed the question of peer
review, based on the idea to open a battlefield on which to
contest the mechanisms of measure and evaluation. The
proposal is to have a process of collective reading, using
an appropriate software solution, i.e. a wiki.
•	For the zero issue, focused on the question of the
“double crisis” and programmed in September, we have
just received some articles or availability to write.
We’ve decided to start with a defined number of articles
(3 or 4 articles for each section, and a couple of reviews).
The proposal for the issue n. 1 (Spring 2010) is:
“University under occupation”. Another proposal is”
“How to start a university” (which would look at the
processes and politics of founding new universities in
places like China, India and Brazil).
•	The abstracts of the articles will be translate in more
languages, choose in a flexible way, following the topics of
each issue and the various topics of the articles. Beyond
the web-journal, we are planning to have a digest – using
the contacts with the publishers of the “Global
University” – that collects two or three issues of the
journal.
•	We have planned a calendar of meetings in 2009, in which
edu-factory will participate, collaborate or directly
organize: Minnesota, Rome, Taipei, Salvador de Bahia,
Kolkata. The aim of the meetings is to expand and
consolidate the edu-factory project, and to change its
composition at the various levels. 
•	We have discussed the proposal of the construction a
network of struggles, that is a network of contacts all
around the world in order to update the website rapidly, to
extend and consolidate the contacts of the collectives,
groups and political practices of resistance and
self-education. This is way of experimenting with the
passage to an organized network. To use a category that
circulates in the edu-factory discussion, it is a way of
moving from the communication to the translation of the
struggles, based on their irreducible singularity and
heterogeneity. At the same time, starting with the question
of gender balance, we developed an important discussion
about the question of the differences and their composition
in the common, which is not the universal. We also
programmed a monthly digest of the network of struggles.
•	In the overall context of Winter Camp, we noted that the
network form could follow two directions: on one hand toward
the community or group, on the other hand toward instituent
practices and the invention of new institutions. The latter
is the road towards the organized network, or to the
institution of the common, to use the words that circulated
in the last round of list discussion.
•	The meeting in Amsterdam has produced a “road map”
laying out plans for the edu-factory project one, two and
five years into the future. It will be available and
published on the website as soon as possible.